The Trouble with Dogs!

Synopsis

The Trouble with Dogs! by Bob Graham

Brought home from the rescue centre, Dave is small and sparky and gets all excited. To Kate he's everything a pup should be. The trouble is, he sometimes gets too excited. He jumps uninvited onto guests' laps, runs down the middle of flowerbeds and chews holes in the tights of Kate's schoolfriends. We need help! Mum decides. But will the man from Pup Breakers really have the answers?

Reviews

Bob Graham's illustrations are always a pleasure to behold and so show us much more than the written story. Books for Keeps

About the Author

Winner of the Kate Greenaway and Smarties Gold Medals and the Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award an unprecedented three times, Bob Graham has written and illustrated many acclaimed children’s books, including How to Heal a Broken Wing and Jethro Byrde, Fairy Child.

Bob Graham lives in Victoria, Australia, with his wife, Carolyn, a printmaker who makes landscapes out of lino and wood. They have two grown-up children, Naomi, a musician and refugee worker living in London, and Peter, an artist in Melbourne making big, beautiful, ethereal paintings in oil. They have two grandchildren, Oliver and his older sister Rosie - and to them he is "Bob" rather than "Grandad" (somehow that name has the feeling of pipes, carpet slippers and rocking chairs; and he's not quite ready for that). He reads them books (mostly other people's and, very occasionally, his own), and they just blob around and go to the park, and things like that. Like a grandad and grandchildren are supposed to do.

As a child

"I lived with my mum, dad, my older sister and my grandmother - and a cat called Smokey. There was still a bit of bush around our suburb, where I could muck about. I could sometimes ride my scooter the entire length of the street in the gutter. There were few parked cars back in those days. I read Boys Own annuals from England, Hans Christian Andersen and Brothers Grimm stories from Europe, and America provided the superheroes in comic book form: Superman, Captain Marvel, The Phantom (the ghost who walks) and even Popeye, who constantly rescued his girlfriend, Olive Oyl, from the clutches of Bluto (all it took was a can of spinach). My course for a lifetime of interesting reading was set."

As an artist

"Every time a computer graphics course is advertised in the local paper, I say, "I MUST go." But I always have something else to do, it seems. So I still use a pen dipped in ink, and chalks and watercolour, and scissors and sticky tape. Oh yes, and sometimes I tap out some words on my computer. And that suits me just fine."